Formatting credit rolls nicely

[Jim Hyslop]

Hi, all

 

I'm currently wrestling with Motion, trying to get a nicely-formatted credit roll. Basically, I want something like:

 

Some kind of heading

maybe a sub-heading

a list

of names

in one

or two

columns

 

With Motion, you have create a separate text item for each font style, to attach a "credit roll" behaviour to each and every text item, fiddle around with each item to line it up, blah blah blah.

 

There's GOT to be an easier way! Especially having to attach a roll behaviour to each text item. If I decide it's too slow or too fast, I'd have to manually change 50 or 60 behaviour items! Yuck! Currently I just render it out at a fairly slow speed, then play with time remapping in FCP.

 

I mean, the $100 cheapo editing package I picked up at Best Buy a few years back had that kind of thing as a preformatted template - all I had to do was type in the text and let it render.

Edited June 25, 2009 by Jim Hyslop

[Jim Hyslop]

While I'm on the topic of Motion, can anyone explain to me why, when I create a text object that has X,Y and Z coordinates all set to zero, the object's centre is about 15 pixels to the right of centre? I have to enter an X offset in order for it to be centred side-to-side. What's up with that?!?

[David Rakoczy]

Surely you can copy and paste attributes... I am not a Motion Guru by any means, but it seems Apple is pretty consistant across their platforms.. so surely you can. Ever try Lynda.com ? A 30 day subscription helped me through many FCP/ Motion issues.

[Steve McBride]

Do up your credits in Photoshop or Illustrator and export hi-res TIF's and import them and just keyframe the animations. That's how I do mine. I use AfterEffects, but I also have Motion and it would work just fine as well.

[Jim Hyslop]

Surely you can copy and paste attributes... I am not a Motion Guru by any means, but it seems Apple is pretty consistant across their platforms.. so surely you can. Ever try Lynda.com ? A 30 day subscription helped me through many FCP/ Motion issues.

I haven't tried copy-and-paste (or maybe I did the first time I went through this, I don't recall). And don't call me Shirley! <rim shot>

 

Now, I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I just tried and you can select all the scroll behaviours (you have to command-click on each one, which is a pain) but once you have them all selected, any changes you make to the behaviour applies to all behaviours you have selected.

 

The scroll speed is, to me, a minor issue compared to getting it laid out. Especially if you have to change anything.

 

Thanks for the tip on lynda.com - I'll check it out.

 

Do up your credits in Photoshop or Illustrator and export hi-res TIF's and import them and just keyframe the animations.

That sounds a lot easier. How big a TIF do you create - exactly the width of your image? For example if it's aimed at 1080, do you create a TIF image 1920 pixels wide by however many pixels high you need?

 

--

Jim

[Steve McBride]

I do the entire width and height of the frame (1280x720, 1920x1080, etc.) for single credits. When you're doing the roll, keep the width the same but just have it as tall as you need it to be.

 

A good tip I learned from a producer is that when you do the credit roll, each credit should take nine seconds to go from the bottom of the frame to the top. I've started to count the amount of time that it takes for movies that I watch and it seems to be right around 9-10 seconds.

 

Also, for single credits (director, writer, producer, etc.) they should be four seconds unless there are more then one person in which you add one second for each person. Only seen it for two people, so not sure how well it works for more than that.

[Jim Hyslop]

I do the entire width and height of the frame (1280x720, 1920x1080, etc.) for single credits. When you're doing the roll, keep the width the same but just have it as tall as you need it to be.

 

A good tip I learned from a producer is that when you do the credit roll, each credit should take nine seconds to go from the bottom of the frame to the top. I've started to count the amount of time that it takes for movies that I watch and it seems to be right around 9-10 seconds.

 

Also, for single credits (director, writer, producer, etc.) they should be four seconds unless there are more then one person in which you add one second for each person. Only seen it for two people, so not sure how well it works for more than that.

 

Unless it's for TV in which case you allow one frame per screenful of credits :-)

 

Thanks for the tips.

 

--

Jim

[Guest clairebear]

this is an interesting discussion. thanks for sharing

 

simulation rachat de credit

[Guest bigbigball]

I've started to count the amount of time that it takes for movies

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Edited July 25, 2009 by bigbigball